Last week, an experienced front-office evaluator watched a thriving veteran struggle to spin what had been, until recent days, a devastating, difference-making breaking ball -- and thought: a sticky-stuff guy. This pitcher might be Clark Kent instead of Superman, the evaluator believes, without the Spider Tack or homemade super glue or whatever he might've been using.
A coaching staffer made the same observation about a high-profile reliever in the AL East -- a pitcher whose impeccable command of fastballs at the top of the zone is suddenly not so impeccable. It's very possible, that staffer decided, that this reliever cannot be great without foreign substances.
A former superstar pitcher notes that high-priced pitchers are abandoning curveballs, sliders and four-seam fastballs, instead throwing more changeups and two-seam fastballs. The foreign-substance crackdown is creating a whole new context under the baseball umbrella -- in the majors, in the minors and even among draft-eligible players. For that reason, mass reassessment is occurring on the fly, and the baseball calendar requires that the review must happen rapidly.
Because the amateur draft is July 11. The All-Star break -- a time when teams typically ramp up trade conversations and begin to commit to being buyers or sellers -- begins the next day. The trade deadline is only 32 days away. And team officials are suddenly taking a fresh look at everybody.
"I think it would be malpractice if you weren't doing that," said one executive.
It's not only about the eye tests, which can be misleading. Teams are watching spin rates closely among opposing pitchers, and among their own pitchers. They are watching how pitchers are altering their repertoires this month.
It's possible that some pitcher is changing because of the usual challenges over the course of the long year -- some midseason weariness, perhaps, or a midseason adaptation. But there is an assumption among many front-office types that a lot of the changes happening now are because pitchers are trying to adjust to life without foreign substances -- and some may be struggling more than others.
Here is some of what evaluators are focused on:
Hitters: A general manager talked last week about one of the veterans on his team whose batting average has been hovering around .200. "We think he's going to break out," the GM said, "because his biggest problems have been against really good breaking balls."
And guess what? The volume of really good breaking balls might be in decline over the next 3½ months. So that slugger who has been swinging-and-missing at a high rate might suddenly face more benign breaking balls and do some damage.
Pitchers who rely on four-seam fastballs and curveballs: In recent years, pitchers have increasingly dominated hitters by using those two particular pitches in tandem -- riding fastballs at the top of the zone and curveballs at the bottom of the zone, and the result has been a dramatic spike in strikeouts.
But as one staffer noted last week, speaking about a very successful pitcher who throws 92-93 mph, "If he can't command that pitch at the top of the zone anymore -- if he's not able to have the same life on his fastball -- he might get hammered. He's a completely different pitcher without that, and without that curveball. He's going to have to find a new way to get hitters out, and that is tough as s--- in the middle of a season."
Relievers: A major trend in the sport over the past decade has been a greater reliance on hard-throwing relievers, many of whom are busting fastballs past hitters at 95-plus mph while also spinning nasty breaking balls. So now teams are scrambling to figure out who among these bullpen pieces can continue to have success under these new circumstances.
"I think what you might see is teams relying a little bit more on their starting pitchers," said one evaluator. "If you've got a starting pitcher who pitches successfully with sinkers, you might be more inclined to try to get more outs from that guy than call on one of the bullpen guys who might not have the same weapons."
True sinkerballers: As teams try to figure out what's going to work and what's not, there seems to be a consensus on this -- that the pitchers least affected by the crackdown are pitchers who rely on two-seam fastballs. The old-fashioned ground-ball pitchers. Think Blake Treinen.
There is another difference-making variable for teams to consider: What happens if the crackdown fades?
There is a school of thought within the sport that eventually, the constant foreign-substance checks will begin to wane, in the hopes that pitchers are either scared straight or that managers will bear the responsibility of asking for checks, as the Phillies' Joe Girardi did last week.
But if that happens, one exec notes, it could make it more tempting for would-be foreign-substance users to use the sticky stuff -- especially given the relatively low-impact nature of the penalty. Ten days with pay, Charles Barkley joked in a text, is like a paid vacation.
"It actually hurts the team more than any player who is caught," said one official, noting that a club that loses a player to suspension must proceed with a shortened roster while the player continues to be paid.